


The Covenant

by Soujin



Category: Christian Bible, Christian Bible (Old Testament)
Genre: M/M, Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-14
Updated: 2012-10-14
Packaged: 2017-11-16 06:44:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,370
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/536623
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Soujin/pseuds/Soujin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jonathan recounts how he met David son of Jesse, and fell in love with him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Covenant

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was written as a gift for several people who donated money to a fundraiser I hosted in 2010, but at this point I feel pretty okay posting it here.

David first came to us in Gibeah after my father’s army defeated the Amalekites. At that time I knew in my heart that the Lord God had ended His covenant with my father, and the grace of the Lord had left my father, for he was tormented, and his spirit suffered all day and all night.

The prophet Samuel who served the Lord in my father’s presence left us too. In the old days Samuel would pass his time in the temple, and when my father brought me by to be anointed, as he did before every battle, Samuel would get up at once and come to us. He smiled when he saw me, and anointed my forehead with oil, saying that the Lord God would protect me from our enemies. My father, who was pleased that I was skilled enough to fight even when I was a boy, would smile also and thank Samuel for my blessing.

Before we battled the Amalekites at Havilah and even as distantly as Shur, and my father slew them entirely, Samuel blessed me, but he did not smile, at me or my father. When I came home, he led me aside and took me by my shoulders, saying, “Jonathan, your father has sinned.”

Truly I did not know how to answer. I knew that my father had disobeyed the Lord God and spared the king of the Amalekites, and he had spared the finest of their cattle and sheep to make sacrifices to the Lord; but I had not argued with him, for I thought it was good to make sacrifices after the Lord had so blessed our fight. Though I knew the Amalekites to be sinners I thought it gracious to have spared their king. But Samuel was angry, and that night I heard him crying out in the temple to the Lord. He cried out all night, and in the morning he went to my father.

I was not permitted in my father’s chambers for that meeting, but I know that Samuel slew Agag king of the Amalekites himself, by his own hand, and then he went to Ramah, without speaking to me again. My father went to his estate in Gibeah, and bade me come with him.

All day in Gibeah I paced in my room, trying to accustom myself to the weight of my body without my armour.

When I was a child in Israel I thought I was my father’s only son. He wished to make a better soldier of me by giving me no reason to hesitate in war, to feel no fear that I might never again meet with some person I loved. Thus I was kept separate from my brothers and my sisters. My father trained me in the use of my sword and my spear and my bow, and I fought in all his battles as soon as I was skilled enough.

But when Samuel left him, my father refused to see me, saying that I was nothing to him for my part in the battle at Havilah. I thought then that I should die, for what purpose had I, if his great battle shamed him? What was I, save my father’s general? I had no friend to turn to, for he had permitted none. He had his advisors, but I was alone.

Then my father called David to Gibeah.

What should I say of David? He came from Bethlehem where he tended sheep for his father, and played his harp for mine. When he played, the sore and restless part of my father’s spirit was finally soothed; for the first time since Samuel left us my father was able to be at peace as he was when the Lord loved him.

David is younger than me by only two or three years, and he is the handsomest man I ever saw; truly I have known few men my own age, for in my father’s armies most of the men are ordinary soldiers, my elders by at least five years, and often as many as ten. In a way David, like these men, falls under my command, for he as well as they have fought for my father, but I do not know how to command him.

He defeated Goliath, the Philistine champion from Gath, with a small stone. I, I have trained my whole life, but swear I could not do such a thing. When my father’s army returned from the Shaaraim road where we routed the Philistines (having returned to war, for my father was heartened by the music David played for him, and took up arms once more), my father presented him to me.

“Jonathan,” he said. “This is the root of Jesse who slew Goliath; the son of Jesse of Bethlehem. You know him; he plays the harp for me.”

I did not know him then; or only from watching from afar. I had not spoken to him. I have never had a tongue that could form fine words, as the priests do in the temples; I cannot speak any way but plainly. Still, I thought at least I would do him the honour I knew how for his part in routing the Philistines--I meant to greet him as it would befit him.

Before our Lord God of the Israelites, who wrestled with Israel our father in the guise of an angel, it was as though something entered into me in his presence. I am not a holy man, and I have never truly felt the spirit of God within me, not as some men do, not as my father once did. Truly I tell you that I will never know that grace that priests speak of, which to hear tell of must be as wonderful as a spear which flies up to the sun, then falls like a gold-backed eagle to its mark. Yet when I stood before David and opened my mouth to greet him, I, who am nothing but a man, I felt as though I were honoured among men.

I swear to you now that I knelt down before him.

I bowed my head so I could not see him, but he set his hands upon my shoulders and drew me to my feet. I still could not speak, so I unbuckled my armour and lay it down before him.

My father made a noise of displeasure behind me, but I could not heed him. David took my armour, though he was too lithe to wear it, and when we had returned to my father’s house he came to my room with me, though my father said he would not be satisfied until David had played for him. In my room I took off my sword and my bow and gave them to David.

He looked at me quietly, with eyes as dark as the burnish of bronze. Still I could not speak, and I took off my robe and my tunic and lay them down, and then David son of Jesse of Bethlehem kissed me.

How should I speak of this kiss? In the commandments our ancestor Moses brought down from Mount Sinai, after the Lord God ransomed us from Egypt, he admonished us against such things, calling upon the displeasure of the Lord. Nevertheless I knew these things were done in my father’s army, often before a battle when the soldiers would take comfort with one another, or when they had been long away from their homes and could not be satisfied alone. But I had never myself-- I had never felt any stirring of passion for man or woman until David kissed me.

He is as strong and lithe as a lioness, and he went to my bed with me in my father’s house. I was dirty from the dust and sweat of the day of fighting, but he washed my skin with fresh water and took my mouth with his. He took me into his hands and between his lips. I had never known these things before.

As long as I had then lived alone, it was as if I had met my brother as well as my lover. At night he would lie beside me, and I felt like a young woman, for truly I confess that I lay awake watching him sleep and thinking on how dear he was to me.

My father had not failed in this: that I do not fear for my own life when I go into battle. Instead I fear for David of Bethlehem. Every fight I expected him to be hurt, though I knew the Lord God to be with him. I fought in a fever by his side and it is as I said before, that I hardly dared to command him. When we had won--as often as not from the strength of his arm above any other reason--it was painful to me to wait to return to my room before I fell on him, kissing his limbs and his face and assuring myself he was unhurt.

When I did this he laughed, gently.

“Jonathan, am I not well? And you are filthy.”

“In the name of the Lord God our God--”

“Shhh.” He kissed me, unbuckling my armour. “The Lord God is with me. I am never afraid.”

This I knew to be a lie, for when David is afraid, or sad, or troubled in his spirit, he writes songs on his harp, and for the last few days he remained in the corner of my room playing and singing. Still, I did not contradict him. I helped us both out of our clothes and he came to my bed, and we knew each other there.

It was soon after this that my father grew to hate David, and he began to devise errands in the hope that David would be slain in the fulfilling of them. At the same time, while David played for him in his chambers, he would strike at him with a spear. David told me all these things, and I begged him to go into hiding, but he swore that the Lord God would protect him.

He swore this to me even on the day he told me that my father intended to marry him to my sister Michal, but had set a marriage-price of one hundred Philistine foreskins.

“One-hundred?” I asked him. “How will you kill one hundred men and take their foreskins? And will you marry my sister?”

“Jonathan, how am I to refuse her? I have already refused your sister Merab--” He held up his hand to silence me, for I had begun to speak. “I didn’t tell you because he changed his mind.”

“He will do it again. He is going mad.”

“If he does not, how am I to refuse? I cannot tell him that I will not take his daughter because I love his son. I will pay the marriage-price twofold, and marry your sister. But do not think it means I will leave you.” David set his hands at my hips and drew me to him.

“Then let me go with you to help you.”

“Let me go alone. Stay here and pray for me.”

We argued more, but it is not worth the telling; in the end he won, and we lay together, and he left. God was with him, as always, and he brought back the marriage-price twofold and was married to my sister.

This did nothing to make my father hate him less, and he began again to look for ways to take David’s life. I argued with him, told him David was one of my best soldiers, his best soldiers. I told him that I needed his help to keep Israel safe. I reminded my father of how he had killed the Philistine champion, and that he was an innocent man.

My father took an oath to spare him, and I thought certainly he was persuaded; too I thought that he had no knowledge of us. David lived quietly with my sister, and I oversaw the training of our new soldiers. I believed all was well until Michal sent word to me that David had fled to Ramah where the prophet Samuel was living, and that I was to meet him there.

By the time I was on the road to Ramah David was on his way back to Gibeah. I met him in a field just outside the city. He had lost all his composure, and was clutching his harp and weeping bitterly, and when I caught him by his shoulders he buried his face in my neck.

“What have I done?” he cried. “What is my crime? How have I wronged your father, that he is trying to take my life?”

“Never,” I said. “You are not going to die. Look, my father doesn’t do anything, great or small, without confiding in me. Why would he hide this from me? It isn’t so, I swear by the Lord God.”

But David swore and said, “Your father knows very well that I have found favour in your eyes, and he has said to himself, ‘Jonathan must not know this or he will be grieved’. Yet as surely as the Lord lives and as you live, there is only a step between me and death.”

“Whatever you want me to do I will do for you.”

“Jonathan, to-morrow is the New Moon festival, and I am supposed to dine with the king; but let me go and hide in the field until the evening of the day after to-morrow. If your father misses me at all, tell him, ‘David earnestly asked my permission to hurry to Bethlehem, his home, because an annual sacrifice is being made there fore his whole clan’. If he says, ‘Very well’, then your servant is safe. But if he loses his temper, you can be sure that he is determined to harm me. As for you, show kindness to your servant, for you have brought him into a covenant with you before the Lord. If I am guilty, then kill me yourself! Why hand me over to your father?”

Truly I tell you I was frightened, for David had never called himself my servant before, and I would never have thought of harming him. My breath ached in my throat and I held him close to me, my fingers curled in his hair so hard I must have been hurting him. “Never! If I had the least knowledge that my father was determined to harm you, wouldn’t I tell you?”

“Who will tell me if your father answers you harshly?”

“Come,” I said, “let’s go into the field,” and I drew him from the road, into the tall fields. He was shaking against my body, and I was sick in my heart and my bowels at the thought that he no longer trusted me to help him against my father. In the field I said to him, “By the Lord God of Israel, I will surely sound out my father by this time the day after to-morrow. If he is favourably disposed toward you, will I not send you word and let you know? But if my father is inclined to harm you, may the Lord deal with me, be it ever so severely, if I do not let you know and send you away safely. May the Lord be with you as he has been with my father. But show me unfailing kindness like that of the Lord as long as I live, so that I may not be killed, and do not ever cut off your kindness from my family--not even when the Lord has cut off every one of David’s enemies from the face of the earth. And may the Lord call David’s enemies to account.” I spoke so for I hoped to show him that I was as much in need of him as he of me, to reassure him.

But David would not speak to me. Instead he kissed me, as feverishly as I used to kiss him after a battle. He pulled me down amongst the heads of wheat in the field and divided the folds of my clothes with his hands, forgetting his harp beside him. He stroked my face, and I kissed his hands and his body, and we knew each other there. For a while I thought he was consoled, for he stopped shaking and he lay quietly beside me afterward, but then he got up and urged me again to protect him from my father.

“To-morrow is the New Moon festival,” I said to him. “You will be missed, because your seat will be empty. The day after to-morrow, toward evening, go to the place where you hid when this trouble began, and wait by the stone Ezel. I will shoot three arrows to the side of it as though I were shooting at a target. Then I will send a boy and say, ‘Go, find the arrows’. If I say to him, ‘Look, the arrows are on this side of you; bring them here’, then come, because, as surely as the Lord lives, you are safe; there is no danger. But if I say to the boy, ‘Look, the arrows are beyond you’, then you must go, because the Lord has sent you away. And about the matter you and I discussed--remember, the Lord is witness between you and me for-ever.”

Then I left him, silent, his face still streaked from weeping.

For the first day of the festival my father said nothing, but the second day he approached me, took me by my shoulder very hard. “Jonathan, why hasn’t the son of Jesse come to the feast, either yesterday or to-day?”

“David earnestly asked me for permission to go to Bethlehem,” I said. “He said, ‘Let me go, because our family is observing a sacrifice in the town and my brother has ordered me to be there. If I have found favour in your eyes, let me get away to see my brothers’. That is why he has not come to the king’s table.”

Then my father struck me in my face. “Son of a perverse and rebellious woman! Don’t I know that you have sided with the son of Jesse to your own shame and to the shame of the mother who bore you? As long as the son of Jesse lives upon this earth, neither you nor your kingdom shall be established. Now send and bring him to me, for he must die!”

“Why should he be put to death? What has he done?” I said, but my father took his spear in his hand and threw it at me. I believe that if he had not trained me so well I would not have been able to avoid it, but certainly I knew that he would not keep the oath he had made to me, to spare David’s life.

I left the festival and fasted until the next morning. Then I went out with a boy and my bow, and told him to run and find my arrows after I shot them. As he was running, I shot beyond him, and cried, “Isn’t the arrow beyond you? Hurry! Go quickly! Don’t stop!” Then he brought my arrows back to me.

I sent him back to town ahead of me, for I intended to walk back quietly by myself, my soul wearied. But David got up from behind the stone Ezel and ran to me. He knelt before me, and then he rose and kissed me, and I began to weep, and he wept too. Truly I believe he wept more than I did, but I cannot say, for we both grieved bitterly and kissed each other all the while.

Then I strengthened my resolve and told him, “Go in peace, for we have sworn friendship with each other in the name of the Lord, saying, ‘The Lord is witness between you and me, and between my descendants and your descendants for-ever’.”

Then David left, and I went back to town.

I only saw him once more after that day. My father went to war against him, but I would not take part in it, and he took my birthright and gave it to my brother Abinadab. I remained in Gibeah while David raised his army in Judah. He joined with Abiathar son of Ahimelech, who was slain by my father, and they saved Keilah from the Philistines; men from Keilah joined his forces there. Then they went into the Desert of Ziph where my father searched for them.

While he was in the desert the Lord God sent His spirit to me for the only time. I was alone in Gibeah in my room, and suddenly I knelt down on the bed where David used to lie by me and began to pray, which I had never done so honestly before, not since I was a small child. At that moment, the Lord instructed me to go to Horesh and meet David, for he had need of me.

It was over as quickly as it came upon me, like a storm that passes, but I felt as though something beautiful, which had entered me, was gone, and I had touched something wondrous that I would never touch again. I lay on the floor and wept because I knew I will never feel it again. I believe it is what my father used to feel when God was with him, and what David feels every day, and for a moment I understood why my father is so angry that David possesses it and not he himself.

When I had wept I roused myself and journeyed to Horesh. There I met David. He had over six-hundred men with him, and he was well-prepared, but I found him silent and frightened as he had been when I left him in the fields outside of Gibeah.

I took him into a room apart and kissed his hands. Then I called for a basin of water and one of oil, and when there were brought I made him sit and I washed his feet. Afterwards I anointed his feet and his forehead with oil, as Samuel always did for me.

“Don’t be afraid,” I said. “My father Saul will not lay a hand on you. You will be king over Israel, and I will be second to you. Even my father knows this.”

I did not lie with him then. Truly I tell you that I regret it now, for my last memory of his body is the brief time we passed in the wheat field before he left. He was inconsolable then, but when I left him in Horesh he was ready to do battle. We sat through the day in his room, and he composed music on his harp to rough songs I tried to write for him. I cannot speak well, but I tried. I sang of the spirit of God, and how it felt when it entered into me. David laughed at my poor singing. I swore my oath to him again, and he made a covenant with me, and then I left, for I could not fight against my own father, not even for David’s sake.

But we are at war with the Philistines again, my father and I. Our army spent too long seeking David, and the Philistines came back down to Israel. We will fight on Mount Gilboa to-morrow.

There is nothing to hold me back now. I have known the spirit of God, which I would never have known without David of Bethlehem. I have known the love a man feels for his brother, and a fiercer love still, and perhaps the Lord God will punish me for it; but I have felt it, and I truly tell you the punishment of having never borne it would be greater. I would never have felt these things if David had not come to Gibeah.

And someday David will be king over Israel, as the spirit of God said to me. When that day comes, I will be his armour-bearer and his servant, his general, his chief officer and his brother. I will never fear for my purpose again.

…

_1 Samuel 31:11-13, 2 Samuel 1:4-10, 17-18, 25-26_

_When the people of Jabesh Gilead heard of what the Philistines had done … all their valiant men journeyed through the night to Beth Shan. They took down the bodies of Saul and his sons from the wall of Beth Shan and went to Jabesh, where they burned them. Then they took their bones and buried them under a tamarisk tree at Jabesh, and they fasted seven days._

_…_

_“What happened?” David asked. “Tell me.”_

_The young man said, “The men fled from the battle. Many of them fell and died. And Saul and his son Jonathan are dead.”_

_Then David said to the young man who had brought him the report, “How do you know that Saul and his son Jonathan are dead?”_

_“I happened to be on Mount Gilboah,” the young man said, “and there was Saul, leaning on his spear, with the chariots and riders almost upon him. When he turned around and saw me, he called out to me, and I said, “What can I do?” He asked me, “Who are you?” “An Amalekite,” I said. Then he said to me, “Stand over me and kill me! I am in the throes of death, but I’m still alive.” So I stood over him and killed him, because I knew that after he had fallen he could not survive.”_

_…_

_David took up this lament concerning Saul and his son Jonathan, and ordered that the men of Judah be taught this lament of the bow (it is written in the Book of Jashar):_

_…_

_How the mighty have fallen in battle!  
Jonathan lies slain on your heights.  
I grieve for you, Jonathan my brother;  
you were very dear to me.  
Your love for me was wonderful,  
more wonderful than that of women._


End file.
